The Videogum Movie Club: Prometheus

When I saw Prometheus this weekend, I went to this new-ish movie theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (which, for those of you who haven’t been there, is basically a Girls Theme Park) called Nitehawk, of course. Like, if you are going to open a movie theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it better be called Nitehawk. The thing about Nitehawk, the catch, because kids these days need a catch, is that it has smaller screening rooms, but with big, comfortable chairs, and there are tables in between every pair of seats, and menus, and a waitstaff, and golf pencils, and a bartender in the lobby and a BRUNCH SPECIAL. I went with some friends and we ATE BRUNCH while we watched Prometheus. What a world this is that we live in. Questlove was in the lobby. It was all v. v. cool. Admittedly, the waitstaff spilled an entire drink on my friend because the thing about movie theaters is that they’re dark. And people kept dropping silverware. And maybe the waitress could have picked a better moment to give us all our bills than during the climactic fight sequence between the SPOILER ALERT and the SPOILER ALERT. So, you’re more than welcome to take everything I say in this “review” with a grain of salt, much like I took my breakfast tacos with a grain of side bacon. There were obviously distractions. My friend Jon said that it was like turning a movie theater into a comedy club. But I think I got the gist of it. In space, no one can hear you LOL.

So, look, Prometheus was probably the most beautiful movie ever made. Holy shit. This movie looked incredible the whole time! When I was in college I had this one film class with this theory nerd who I just could not make heads or tails of. One time we were talking about movies and he said that he didn’t like movies where people talked or where anything happened (uhhh) and I said well what movies do you like and he said, no joke, “landscapes.” Well, OK! But actually I thought of him during the opening sequence of Prometheus because I could totally watch an entire movie of just those sweeping shots of incredible landscapes. So pretty! And then you throw a mid-century modern spaceship in there and a beefcake alien sake-bomb? A++ would do business with opening sequence again. So great.

And now we’re on the ship with our robot buddy and the whole thing is very Wall-E and we are ON BOARD. This is going great. This ship looks cool. Our alien buddy seems cool. Lawrence of Arabia is cool. All of it. Fist bump. And now we are arriving at our destination and everybody’s waking up and Charlize Theron is doing push ups which is foreshadowing for how she’s going to be a total BITCH, and everyone else is puking because of the future. The one crusty punk isn’t here to make friends, which seems kind of aggressive, and also who gets into geology “for the money”? But whatever. Let’s see what’s up! What’s up, guys?

Uh oh. We have hit our first SERIOUS PROBLEM! You see, some very pretty 28-year-old “scientists” have found some ancient hieroglyphs and wall paintings that suggest that there were aliens on Earth 10 million years ago, or whatever, and so now that the technology is available to broadcast photorealistic hologram dogs on the floor travel to the distant planet, we’re gonna check it out. All of that is fine. Except, this movie, like lots of potentially complicated movies, establishes one of the movie’s basic conceits by simply having one of the characters say it out loud. “All of the cave paintings are the same, therefore the alien creatures CREATED US.” Wait, what? How did you get that from the mud pictures? I’m willing to believe that you arrived at the conclusion that Earth was visited by aliens a long time ago, but how do you know that ALIENS THEREFORE MADE HUMANS? That simply doesn’t track in any way whatsoever from the information you have presented us in your Minority Repowerpoint. “It’s a map.” “No, it’s an invitation.” How is it an invitation? At the very least it could be a map OR an invitation? Strike one!

And then more strikes. I mean, it’s Monday and the movie made 50 million dollars, so I’m not going to relay the whole plot. The whole point of the Videogum Movie Club in the first place is that we all saw the movie together AS A FAMILY. But there were some problems! For example: we know the robot has his own secret agenda that he’s not sharing with the crew, which is fine, that’s always a fun plot. But WHAT is his secret agenda? It never makes any sense. He wants to poison the one dude with the black liquid so that he puts an octopus baby in the one lady? Why? Why is that his secret plan? (Admittedly, I hated that one dude every single time he opened his mouth–world’s cockiest douchebag archaeologist–so it was fine that he got sick and I’m glad they burned him all up, but still don’t see the actual point of giving him eye worms.) Speaking of the black liquid: sometimes you drink it and it creates an entire species of creatures out of the waterfall, and sometimes you drink it and it gives you eye worms and yucky sperm, and sometimes you get it on your space mask and it allows you to turn into a bearded crab space zombie with face bumps and super strength? That black stuff is more versatile than Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap! (And combining the Dr. Bronner’s Liquid Black Evil Space Soap with the earlier point of people just suddenly knowing something based on nothing that we have seen or heard: how come Idris Elba comes back to the ship after one trip into the cave and suddenly knows that this entire planet was a military installation and that the aliens were making weapons of mass destruction and that the weapons of mass destruction then turned on them? That seems like a pretty good guess out of nowhere!)

And yo, you are in a creepy nightmare cave in space filled with oozing canisters of magic black liquid. SO MAYBE WHEN YOU SEE A SPACE SNAKE IN THE CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN YOU DON’T TRY TO PET IT? What is THAT all about? They actually do the same thing in the original Alien, which is obviously great and a classic and whatever, but it’s like you are all alone a billion light years from home and you see an entire room filled with spooky dragon eggs and you’re like “Hey guys, I’m going to slap on the top of this spooky space dragon egg, see what it’s all about.” What? No. “Look at her, she’s beautiful.” The fuck out of here with that! THE FUCK OUT OF HERE WITH THAT!

“Hey, you have one of those ultra-rare self-surgery machines!”
“Don’t touch that.”
“OK, I won’t touch it, and I bet I never touch it for the rest of the movie. There is no way this is a painfully obvious set-up for a later set-piece.”
“ALERT ALERT THIS ULTRA-RARE THREE-BILLION-DOLLAR SELF-SURGERY MACHINE ONLY WORKS ON MEN.”

#OhJeez

As a general rule, and this is a pro-tip to all of the ambitious sci-fi action-adventure writer-directors out there who have ambitions of making great movies: if you’re watching a rough cut of your movie and it features TWO MONSTERS FIST/TENTACLE FIGHTING, you might want to take a step back and work on your movie some more.

“It’s too bad there isn’t a single talented actor over the age of 35. Oh well, let’s put Guy Pearce in terrible old man makeup.” – AHHHH THIS MOVIE SOMETIMES!

There actually was a brief moment where I thought that despite its many missteps (“I’m a black cowboy from the future with a shapeshifting accent of indeterminate origin, but if there’s one thing I love, it’s this antique Stephen Stills squeezebox.” Oh brother) Prometheus was going to redeem itself with a bold and intense ending. Remember after the one ship bumps into the other ship and Charlize and Noomi are running through the sad space desert and the croissant spaceship rolls over and crunches on Charlize and then it hits Noomi and she’s sitting in the dirt and her spacesuit says “Hey man, you’ve got 2 minutes of oxygen left, dude”? Now imagine for a second that what we see next is two minutes shot in real time of Noomi being stuck under this giant ship all alone in the vast expanse of space and her breathing is getting shorter and then she just dies and we don’t get any answers and space is scary and everyone dies. That would be a great ending! (This moment reminded me of when a similar thing happened in A.I. and the little boy robot got trapped underwater and was just going to be awake and conscious underwater for all of eternity or until his hydrogen battery died or whatever, and that would be so interesting and a great ending but instead the ice robots came and gave him a dream day with his fucking mom.) Instead other stuff happened, though.

Again: There were some really great ideas in it. And Prometheus was just so beautiful. Beautiful to the point of distraction, where it took awhile for some of the problems to even set in because you’re like, I know, but this is nice to look at! But then the problems got impossible to ignore. I think the best summation of the movie’s flaws came afterwards when me and my Movie Brunch Friends made our way down to a nearby bar and were sitting in the backyard having a beer and picking apart the movie as people do and my friend Jon suddenly remembered how the advanced species of space creatures who created all of mankind thousands of years ago and had super-futuristic spaceships filled with holographic security cam footage and everything used a SPACE FLUTE to start the engine on their spaceships, and then he, Jon, started playing an air space flute and went “DOODLEY-DOODLEY-DOO!” and then yelled “FUUUUUUUUCK YOU!” and I laughed until I cried. For real. Tears, my man. #Prometheus

Now, first OFF, I’ll admit to TWO things: 1) Alien is an INCREDIBLE damn movie and EASILY one of my favorites and 2) I WENT into this film with tempered RESERVATIONS and the INTENTION to not judge it against ALIEN because, hey, this isn’t Alien, it’s just SET IN THE same universe. VERY cool stuff! LET’S do it! I thought!

WELL THEN there was that OPENING scene which, uh, I GUESS was cool. In HINDSIGHT that intro is a FUCKIN Damon Lindelof PRIMER: some mysterious SHIT, kinda cool, AND AN idiotic understanding of SCIENCE that basically equates it WITH FUCKIN magic and shit. DUMB. TITLE. Whatever, LET’S tango with THE ALIENS, COMPADRES. After that, I WAS feeling it FOR A bit! Yeah, I WAS basically WATCHING Planet Space on DISCOVERYFUTURE but holy shit WAS IT awesome in 3d. It was BEAUTIFUL and interesting and then Not-Ripley and the Mexican Non-Union Equivalent of Tom HARDY show up. ZZZ.

Then David “Bigdick” Fassbot shows up and holy shit is he GREAT! His introduction, y’all? SUPER GOOD! MORE of that PLEASE! And not the bullshit one liner characterization that follows. AFTER that, though, it turns out that in the FUTURE ships named Prometheus are ACTUALLY code named USS Stupid Mistakes BECAUSE WHAT the fuck is ANYONE on that THING thinking? “Oh, HEY thing that SOUNDS AND is acting like a snake! Let’s cuddle!” – THE WORLD’S best Biologist, people. Ugh. That’s just THE beginning of it, too, as the movie starts MAKING characters do WHATEVER the movie needs them to DO IN that second and has no problem MAKING everyone forget about IT afterwards. Seriously, WHERE are the consequences IN THIS movie! No one cares THAT two dudes are LOST in a cavern complex THAT THEY conveniently have A MAP of. THEN no one REALLY cares that they die. No one cares after MNUETH is burned alive WITH A MYSTERIOUS DISEASE. No one CARES when a zombie shows UP AND destroys six dudes. NO ONE cares that Not-Ripley HAS AN ALIEN Abortion (LOL at the MOVIE playing it safe and calling it a c-section, BTW). NO one CARES that Leonard Shelby SNUCK on board, probably still LOOKING for his wife’s killer (I know there’s CUT FOOTAGE of him young but it’s still SUPER fucking dumb), THIS TIME having stolen the TERRIBLE old person’s make UP from Watchmen. Oh, and SOMEONE watched Will Ferrell get RUN over by a steamroller in SLOW MOTION back in 1997 and thought THAT wouldn’t be fucking AWFUL played straight. WHAT THE FUCK PROMETHEUS.

Now, I KNOW I said I wasn’t going to COMPARE IT to Alien, and, y’all, I really TRIED hard to hold to that, but I couldn’t when IT WAS THE SAME MOVIE! If anything, this MOVIE adhered too closely to ALIEN and fuckin repeated it BEAT for BEAT but just in a less interesting way. And TO ADD insult to injury TO THAT shit, it basically midichlorians the SHIT out of the Space Jockeys (FUCK calling them Engineers). In Alien, WHEN they find the Derelict, the Space Jockey was this mysterious CREATURE THAT seemed drastically different then MAN and ancient beyond OUR comprehension. It set the STAKES early by illustrating man’s insignificant and ignorant role in the GALAXY at large. Oh, but you KNOW WHAT, George Lucas would like to know if you want to downsize your universe and JUST make those FUCKING ALIENS big ol, pale HUMANS. SO then Klaus Haas is running around, wrecking SHIT for no reason (although, WE DO know the reason, but I’ll get to THAT IN a second), and I could not REALLY care less. What A boring fuckin ALIEN. Not to mention, THE IMPLAUSIFUCKINBILITY of having a 100% DNA match with them THOUGH what the fuck does that MEAN? That they have the same DNA make up as us? Because, uh, EVERYTHING on earth has the same DNA building blocks as us. AT(U)GC, BITCH. Not to mention, are we SUPPOSED to believe that these guys started LIFE AND it just happened to evolve to HUMANS over the course of however LONG WHICH just HAPPENED to have the “100% same DNA” as THE aliens? OH right. Space Magic. Damon Lindelof.

Now, to be FAIR, the film raises some INTRIGUING questions, but then seems to devolve into A FUCKIN WEAK ASS slasher film since, you know, in Alien the Alien killed PEOPLE. The problem, HERE, though is that THERE’S no real tension or ANTAGONIST. In Alien, it was simple. There WAS THE crew of the Nostromo and the Alien. In Aliens, it’s the Marines vs the Aliens. There’s a constant THREAT that allows the TENSION to build. IN Prometheus, THOUGH, they couldn’t think THAT shit through. They just USED the magic black goo to INVENT creatures to KILL off people whenever they needed TO eliminate SOMEONE from the plot. It was WHACK. There’s no TENSION and no real cohesion to the THREAT they face. Instead, it’s JUST random fucking NONSENSE and NOT EVEN getting into THE BULLSHIT mechanics of HOW an Xenomorph ends up GETTING made.

Again, this could STILL work if the characters weren’t SO fucking stupid or POORLY written. Instead, we have a bunch OF thinly drawn STOCK characters that don’t really DO MUCH but wait to die or take part in two OF THE worst written scenes I’VE SEEN in a long ass time: 1) the eye-rolling “ARE YOU MAKING FUN OF ME BECAUSE I CAN’T HAVE BABIES!!!” scene and 2) the cringe-inducing LINE READING that was “…FATHER!” Ugh. Someone JUST FACEHUG me and get it over with. This sucks.

All that SAID, it was a very pretty MOVIE and the CGI was incredibly SEAMLESS (though, what the hell was up WITH THAT Superman-ripping off score?). I’m sure—and I hope!—some PEOPLE really enjoyed this thing. THERE might be something there TO enjoy? It at LEAST had some open QUESTIONS that were interesting EVEN if they are soaked WITH LINDELOF’s bullshit treatment OF FAITH (seriously, does that guy even KNOW what faith IS? OR DOES he just fucking really think he’s softball, unrealistic, movie-safe VERSION of faith is the way PEOPLE roll? READ some fucking Kierkegaard, DICK.) that he fucked up in LOST, too. Still, CONVERSATION can be GOOD! Like, do you wonder WHY the Paliens WANTED to kill us? I did! THEN I remembered that THEY said the remaining PALIEN had been in stasis for a little OVER 2,000 years. Huh, I WONDER what the fuck happened 2,000 years AGO that’d make THESE GUYS so angry?

OH. Fuck ME. And FUCK you Damon Lindelof (and, kind of, you TOO Scott. I can TELL you wanted it TO BE great but I’M sorry, it wasn’t. Then you CONFIRMED that it was ALL started by JESUS being killed). I used to defend LOST, BUT now it is relatively CLEAR TO me that you are A HACK. Fuck off. I’m GONNA go rewatch Alien now. AND DEFINITELY NOT CRY, OKAY?

The space flute was very Willy Wonka calling the oompa loompas. Other than that I really enjoyed this movie. The only thing that really started to bother me was how unscientific the scientists behaved. Taking the helmets off? Touching stuff??? Slimy horrible stuff!???!! No no no no no!!!

I could watch Idris Elba do and say anything, sooooooo yeah. Nice squeezebox. Nice accent. Nice faces he’s making at his co-pilots while he’s talking nonchalantly over the radio to the two, very scared and soon-to-be-dead men stuck in the croissant of horrors. Also, he boned Samus Aran, soooo yeah. I would love to put Idris in all the movies. Sign him up for the new ones, green-screen him into all the old ones.

I’ve been to that theater in Williamsburg Gabe. I was sort of hipper though because I saw a Miranda July movie and you can’t get much more hip than watching a Miranda July movie in the heart of Girlsville. I mean c’mon.

I mostly am behind this, although I still loved it, but I’ll say that the whole “why does THIS mysterious space weapon make zombies and THAT mysterious space weapon make wombsquids” is a ridiculous complaint. It’s like if a bunch of cavemen found like an abandoned National Guard weapons cache and started saying “why does THIS one throw pieces of metal really fast and THAT one set me on fire?” WHO KNOWS! In space nobody can hear you understand ancient alien technology!

So I saw the movie yesterday and I’ve spent a good 24 hours mulling over it. And honestly, I’m super angry. This was a super beautiful movie! So pretty and well-designed, there were some beautiful shots. Now why the heck couldn’t they have spent the same amount of time on the plot and characters? There was so little character motivation, I really have no idea why anyone was doing anything. David, escpecially, was super annoying. How did he know the black gunk was going to empregnate the scientist lady? Why the eff did he even want to do that? Granted, Charlie was annoying as hell and deserved a gruesome end, but I do not understand why David did that, at all. I know he was all “how far would you go,” but how is eating black stuff going to show them the origin of life? Derp.

Everything was just so jumpy, it made no sense. Why would you just leave those two guys in the caves and then not monitor them? Couldn’t they go back and watch the video feed to see the dudes getting killed by alien creatures? You’d think that technology would exist.

I am just going to avoid any Lindelof-related projects, since this had all the same problems as Lost. Too many loose ends, weird religious references, and no character development.

The only thing that makes me happy is that wasn’t, in fact, Tom Hardy as annoying scientist guy. It’s apparently his american doppelganger. Good choices, Tom Hardy.

One of the thoughts I had afterward was that I would pay decent money to see a new editor get all the raw film and cut this into an amazing silent film – or at least one with very sparse dialogue, ala portions of 2001 and, yes, Alien.

Hell, stretch out a lot of those landscapes, star field, alien architecture shots as long as possible. Leave the plot a little more cryptic and evocative (e.g. cross necklace can stat in as a symbol, not something every damn character mentions in every scene?). And keep the MedPod scene as is, because holy shit.

I was confused as to why, after only being aware of a substance for a few hours, the robot would want to poison that alcoholic scientist with it. And Lindelof’s answer is basically that a hybernating nonagenerian ordered the robot to poison the scientist in the hopes that the scientist would impregnate his girlfriend with an alien baby. BECAUSE WHY? I don’t get his end game, really. Guy Pearce is like, “WHATEVER, I’M OLD AND I CAN’T WAIT AROUND TO SEE WHAT THIS SHIT IS OR WHAT IT DOES, JUST GET IT INTO SOMEBODY ALREADY.”

I think the reason behind most of these complaints is simply a misread of the film’s tone. Had the film been titled “Indiana Astronaut and the Temple of Goo,” there would probably be less confusion. It’s straight faced pulp, specifically 1950s sci-fi pulp, and the characters fit the tropes of the genre very closely. It’s a little surprising, given that it comes from a series which tends to lean toward the Very Serious, but there are a lot of visual and audio quotes of classics from the genre that reinforce that read, and the film becomes much more enjoyable when you watch it with that mindset.

I was actually part of the audience of the Kevin Smith show Spoilers on Hulu and when participation time came, I made sure I was first to voice my distaste. Like how one second Halloway is taking off his helmet Mr. Cool Guy and then five minutes later he is freaking out about how opening a door is breaking protocol. I was extra excited about the fact that since the guest was Damon Lindelof he had to listen to us deconstruct the failings.

I think the best possible ending would have been if Noomi Rapace had reached the “lifeboat” and peered into the “operating” room and seen that her aborted alien fetus had grown into an xenomorph (Alien) and the movie just cut to black right there. The whole thing with her lying on the ground screaming and then carrying David’s head around for the rest of the movie was kind of ridiculous and unnecessary.

Plus, aren’t xenomorphs born out of humans? Why did it have to explode out of the Engineer? I would understand if humans and Engineers didn’t have the exact same DNA, but they do, so why would Noomi “produce” a giant face hugger and the Engineer produce a xenomorph? And why didn’t the scientist with the glasses who got facehugged early on produce a xenomorph? Or did he and that’s how their species propagates and survives?

If Engineers and humans have the same DNA, why do we look so different? Blergh.

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